Frank’s Stream

“Nae rod and line fur ma freen Frank,
Na! He used something bigger,
He’d just sit aboon the bank,
And howk them wi’ his digger!”

So wrote Alistair Petrie, the Finavon Ghillie of old, referring to an incident when his friend, the legendary local machine driver, Frank Calder; who gives this pool its name, ‘accidentally’ caught a sea trout with his JCB’s bucket. 

Frank was asked to build this pool with his machine in the late 1980’s (when this could still be done legally) and made a fine job of it indeed, which we still see the benefit of even today. The pool has a good streamy head which usually holds a fish or two in low water, and is worth exploration using different tactics and angles of approach. In a higher water, the whole pool fishes well from the North bank, especially from about halfway down and into the tail, where the angler is covering some superb lies which are spread across the full width of the river. The extremity of the tail is often a place to hook a fish which has paused on its way up from Indies below in a big water. Franks is another popular sea trout pool at night, particularly the tail section underneath the overhanging alder branches on the South side.